All Posts in Bangalore

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated:

Few days back, we had written about Social Media Week that kicks off on 23rd February in Bengaluru. Today, we have received some more details about the event & that creates a “Compelling” reason to attend SMW,2015.

Bangalore goes social again with the fourth edition of Social Media Week [SMW] in India with the theme being Upwardly Mobile: The Rise of The Connected Class. For more details, please refer this earlier article.

SocialMediaWeek_2015

Monday [23rd February] & Friday [27th February] will see the event being hosted at The Leela Palace while the mid-week sessions will be held at venues including News Cafe, Big Pitcher, Total Yoga Oneness Centre, Loft 38, Take 5, and WeSchool Bengaluru.

SMW’15 February edition is scheduled simultaneously across the world in seven cities– Bangalore, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Jakarta, Lagos, Milan & New York.

SMW,15 Highlights

Some of the highlight topics & sessions that will be covered at SMW, Bengaluru are as follows:

  1. Panel discussion on Brand Reputation & Crisis
  2. Weathering Twitter Storm
  3. Internet Of Things [IOT] in India
  4. Big data & Big Brands
  5. Insightful workshops on Social Media for Travel Marketing
  6. Cracking Social Media content strategy
  7. Masterclass on Viral Campaigns
  8. Integrated social media marketing
  9. Inspirational talk on Growth Hacking for Startups
  10. Brand Identity in Digital
  11. Career in Social Media & many more

SMW, Bengaluru highlight speakers include

  1. Mahesh Murthy, Founder Pinstorm
  2. Suhel Seth, CEO Counselage
  3. B. Dayananda, I.P.S, Additional Commissioner of Police
  4. P. Krishna Kumar, Executive Director & General Manager Dell India
  5. Harish Bijoor, Brand-Expert
  6. Sandeep Aurora,Director – Marketing & Market Development
  7. Prem Panicker, Sr. Journalist
  8. Vasantha Kumar, Director Of Marketing & Communications

Alliances & Partnerships

Social Media Week [SMW] has partnered with the Bengaluru City Traffic Police [BCTP] & kick-started an online campaign titled #ImTheChange encouraging citizens to click pictures, shoot videos & share their pledges towards road safety on SMW page. The campaign has already received 3000+ pledges and has created social buzz reaching to more than 1M Bangaloreans.

Speaking about the event, Rohit Varma, Founder R SQUARE Consulting & Director, SMW Bengaluru said

Social Media Week is a platform to share ideas, gain insights & collaborate to innovate. Involvement of the whole industry has made this property unique and that has been the success factor. We have more than 70+ sessions, 150+ speakers sharing their knowledge across 5 hubs. We are very excited to witness the social festival going live in the coming week

SMW Sponsors

Dell, a pioneer in integrating social media into the fabric of its business and engagement with customers, is the title sponsor for SMW Bangalore 2015. Additional partners include Intel [City Support], Wrangler [Style Sponsor], IBM [Event sponsor], Genesis Burson-Marsteller [Integrated Communications], Contract Advertising [Event Partner], BlogAdda [Blogging partner], YourStory [Knowledge], 10,000 Startups by Nasscom, Social Samosa [Partner in Thought], Let’s Venture [Event Partner], Yellow Seed Content Solution [Content Partner], Web Marketing Academy [Event Partner], Culture Machine [Event Partner], Lonely Planet [Event Partner], Digital Vidya [Event Partner] & Uber [Logistics] among others.

Complete Schedule, Registration details

Registration Page

Registrations for SMW Bangalore has started and to register for the event, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/choose-pass/

Schedule Page

For complete schedule of the event, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/schedule/ & to download the schedule, please visit http://socialmediaweek.org/bangalore/download-schedule

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated:

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce marketplace announced the launch of the ‘Flipkart Fashion Files’ – an exclusive lifestyle content page on its platform. Flipkart has joined hands with the Conde Nast Group to co-create high quality fashion content for its young & dynamic customers.

Targeted at fashion savvy Indian shoppers, the files will host ‘Flipkart Fashion Files’ will host a range of exclusive fashion diva/celebrity interviews, trend boards, brand and product stories along with lifestyle articles.

Ileana D’Cruz will be the face of ‘Flipkart Fashion Files’ for the month of November. Other contributors to the first edition include prominent fashion photographers like Rohan Shreshtha & Porus Vimadalal.

Commenting on the launch, Mukesh Bansal, Head – Fashion [Flipkart]

We are happy to announce the launch of ‘Flipkart Fashion Files’ in association with the Conde Nast Group. With this we aim to enhance the shopping experience of our style savvy shoppers by introducing fashion content curated by experts in this field. This is a true combination of high quality commerce and content which will add new dimension to our fashion category and make it the ultimate fashion destination for every shopper

Commenting on this association, Alex Kuruvilla, Managing Director of Conde Nast India

We are delighted to power Flipkart Fashion Files by creating cutting edge fashion & lifestyle digital content through our newly formed division Conde Nast Factory. Through our knowledge of latest trends, global and local and access to the finest talent, we are well positioned to create relevant and high quality content month on month for Flipkart’s fashion and beauty interested audience.

For more information, please check “Flipkart Fashion Files” Page

|In: Android|Last Updated:

Flipkart, India’s largest e-commerce marketplace, became the first in the industry to launch an app compatible with the Android wearable technology. The app will support viewing Flipkart wishlists on the wearable gear. Another significant feature with this update is that the app will now support push notifications from Flipkart on the gear.

This, however is possible only if users enable push notifications to be viewed via the gear. Possible future updates of the app include accessing order tracking related information, price drop notification & personalized offer notification.

Moto 360, which is back in stocks, was launched last month & Flipkart is now the exclusive retailer in India for three globally leading wearable technology brands – Garmin, Motorola and Martian. The latest version of this app will be compatible with all the three brands & will be the first app from India to be listed on the Android wearable technology store.

The current features available in the latest app are:

  • User Interface : Brand New User Interface and faster app
  • Happy Shopping : No Hassle Returns, 100% Buyer Protection
  • Choice of Payments : Cash on Delivery, Credit/Debit Card, EMI, NetBanking, PayZippy
  • Smarter Search : Look up products, categories or brands using text, voice or by barcode
  • Explore Your Way : Quickly switch between List, Grid and Full Screen views
  • Pinpoint Products : Find what you want with the sort and multi-filter functions
  • Never Miss an Offer : Get access to personalized and exclusive app-only deals
  • Personalized Alerts : Get notifications on personalized offers, price drops, order status & exclusive launches
  • Product Suggestions : Relevant recommendations based on your shopping history
  • Share with Friends : Suggest links to interesting products on Facebook, Twitter, Google+
  • Examine Closely : View products in great detail with the large, multi-perspective images
  • Do More with Images : Save images to your phone or instantly share them with friends
  • One-touch Wishlist : Add products to your Flipkart Wishlist with just one tap

To use the Flipkart wishlist on wearable devices, perform the following steps :

  1. Update the Flipkart application to the latest version from the app store
  2. Connect your wearable device to the phone
  3. Wishlist will automatically get installed on the wearable
  4. To download or review the app, please click here

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 3 Comments

There have been many articles on this blog about Unconference(s) but just like it, there is information scattered on the topic across the internet. There couldn’t have been anyone better than Kiruba Shankar to write a book on Unconference. Before I start the book review, let’s see what exactly is an Unconference:

An unconference is a facilitated, participant-driven conference centered on a theme or purpose. The term “unconference” has been applied, or self-applied, to a wide range of gatherings that try to avoid one or more aspects of a conventional conference etc. [Source : Wikipedia]

To keep it simple, An “Unconference” is a gathering where every attendee is a speaker & it is a conference of the attendee, by the attendee & for the attendee.

About the Author

Kiruba was one of the organizer’s of BlogCamp, Chennai [the first Blog Unconference in India] that was held in 2006 & under the non-profit organization “The Knowledge Foundation”; he & his team have organized many successful unconference’s namely BarCampChennai, BlogCamp, Proto.in, SearchCamp, WikiCamp, FailCamp & many more…

Detailed Review

Being an active unconferencer himself, the author has collated his experiences in his simple book which is around 150 pages long.

The book starts with the basic topic of “Introduction to unconference” given that many of the readers might not be familiar with the concept of Unconference itself !!! The concept is very well explained along with the origin of Unconference [excerpts from the book below]

As stated by Dave Winer – “The sum of expertise of people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of people on stage” and called Fundamental Law of Conventional Conferences. If a random group of people were picked from the audience & were put together to discuss the same issue of the conference, it is likely that there is greater energy, enthusiasm & learning. Thus, the idea of unconference’s was born.

For many, it might seem that unconference is similar to “Conference with MORE Freedom” hence the author has explained the “Differences between conferences & unconferences“. Some excerpts from the topic below:

The best time in a conference is during coffee breaks. Unconference is like one big coffee break. Great conversations are definitely expected in unconferences !!!

Rest of the book dives into different methodologies to spice up the meetings & gives details into how “Boring” meetings/conferences can be transformed into “Interesting & Interactive” unconferences. These topics help the reader to organize meetings [with smaller i.e. < 5 members as well larger audience i.e. 50+ more] in a more intuitive way so that every person in the audience takes something back from the meeting !!! Some excerpts from the book on these methodologies below [PS: Every chapter on these topics are sub-divided into a) Uniqueness of the methodology. b) How to organize it. c) Case-Study]:

Open Space Technology

Open Space runs on two fundamentals: Passion & Responsibility. Passion engages people in the room. Responsibility ensures that things get done.

– Harrison Owen, Creator of Open Space Technology.

Four principles of Open Space Technology:

  1. Whoever comes are the right people.
  2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
  3. When it starts is the right time.
  4. When it’s over, it’s over.

Appreciative Inquiry

 Appreciative Inquiry leverages the most positive possibilities by involving all the voices in the community.

– Bliss Browne, Founder – Imagine Chicago

 It focues on what is possible rather than what is not. It starts with the belief that every organization & every person in that organization has positive aspects that can be built open. It is one of the best methods to build an “OPEN” company culture !!!

(more…)

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 17 Comments

It has almost been around a month since my last article and it was time to get along with my blogging and here [Courtesy- Indiblogger] is the “appealing” reason which motivated me to get back to it !!! So, as you might have already guessed, I also thought of giving a shot to the “Samsung Blogger’s Contest”  & if this entry wins, it would be a privilege to be one of their “Mobilers” 🙂

Before, we get into the review; I want to share that my first brush with Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 [henceforth referred as “Galaxy Tab 750”] which happened at the Best Buy store during my Visit to US in June,2011. Though, I had already purchased the killer beast Apple iPod Touch but Galaxy Tab 750’s amazing experience left me aghast and wanting for more [Unfortunately, I could not purchase it due to budget constraints]. So, here comes my hands-on review [which I had for half an hour] with this amazing piece of beauty named “Samsung Galaxy Tab 750“

Android 3.1 [Honeycomb]

As we know that Android 3.1 is the tablet optimized version of the open source operating system – Android. Though there were several enhancements made for tablets, the top one on my list is definitely the “UI Enhancements“. Below is a comprehensive Google IO presentation which touches every nook & corner of Honeycomb [Slides:17-22*] over it’s predecessors.

Now the question which arises is that the “Samsung Galaxy Tab 750” is not the ONLY tablet with Honeycomb, there are many other alternatives like the XOOM, Asus Transformer, Acer’s Iconia etc but the points below would prove that “Samsung Tab” is a clear winner …… so read on ……

Impressive Specs

IMHO, any “Embedded” device is nothing but a “Board with components like registers, capacitors etc” if it’s processor [CPU] cannot handle enough load. After looking at the Galaxy Tab 750’s specifications, the only thing that would come out of your mouth is WOW !!!

The Galaxy Tab 750 is powered by the Nvidia Tegra-2 1GHz processor which runs on the “Dual Core ARM A9”, and even when I launched multiple applications;there was not much change in the performance. As you read-on, you would realize it is not second generation TAB from Samsung but a new avatar of it’s predecessor “Samsung Galaxy Tab 7“

The complete specs can be found here but here are my favorite picks –

Weight – 595 grams.

Display– Size : 10.1 inches

Color & Resolution : 16 Mn & 1280×800 Pixels

Faster Processor – Nvidia Tegra 2 Dual-Core 1GHz Processor

Expandable Memory – micro-SD card slot expandable upto 32 GB [though the USB adapter has to be bought separately 🙁 ]

Browsing – Flash support

Image Courtesy Gadget Technology News

Design, Design & Design [all the way]

Design is the key to anything, be it website or consumer product like a tablet & this time around, Samsung has definitely gone head-to-head with Apple[termed Design Guru] and won us over with Galaxy Tab’s sleek design.

As specified above, the Tab weighs just 595g and it is just 8.6mm thick which makes it a easy & lighter device to carry when we are on the go!!! It has become a routine that whenever a tablet is released [be it the bottom of the Pyramid tablets like latest Reliance 3G Tab or the most popular one in the higher range Apple iPad2], it is always compared to the iPad2 … so here we go with our comparison…

Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 with iPad2

Image Courtesy PC World

Here goes my feature list on where Galaxy Tab 750 wins over iPad2

Samsung Galaxy Tab 750 Apple iPad2 [Wifi Only]
Operating System Android Honeycomb 3.1 [Ideal for Google User’s] iOS 4.3.3
Processor 1GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 with ARM Cortex 9 CPUs 1GHz dual-core Apple A5
Internal Memory 1GB RAM; 16GB flash storage 500MB RAM; 16GB flash storage
Display 10.1” (diag); 1280×800; 149 ppi 9.7”(diag); 1024×768; 132 ppi
Battery 7000mAH 3.7V Li-polymer [Bigger Battery, more life] 6930mAH 3.8V Li-polymer

In a nutshell, for any heavy duty user of Google Services like Gmail, Reader etc., the Galaxy Tab 750 is definitely a better pick as it comes bundled with all of those services !!!

IMPROVED TouchWiz UX [for TABLETS]

Samsung has always been using it’s proprietary “TouchWiz Interface” for phones like Samsung Galaxy S2 & it’s other Android phones. But like many others, I did not like the TouchWiz experience on my S2.

However,  Samsung has made an extra-ordinary effort and customized it’s TouchWiz interface for tablets… and boy, it looks quite amazing & intriguing on the Samsung Tab 750.

Below is a short video from our friends at GadgetExperts reviewing the new TouchWiz UX

There are many enhancements made, but here are my favorite picks :

Mini Apps Tray – There are six tools on top of any running application namely Task Manager, Music Player, Calendar, World Clock, Pen Memo and Calculator. The tray would fade out once when you are using the main application and would again re-appear when you tap on it.

The list of apps however is customizable and I am sure this change would definitely be there in Samsung’s To-Do list…

Motion Control Zooming – This feature is more of fun and a very nice alternative to Pinch & Zoom [Video: 5.15 – 5:45]. Just click a photograph and move your Galaxy Tab 750 back & forth to experience this feature 🙂

I am sure that apart from the features which I liked the most, the Galaxy Tab 750 would definitely provide me with BETTER:

  1. Web Browsing
  2. Speed
  3. Reading
  4. Music
  5. Communication
  6. Office
  7. Multimedia
  8. Imaging
  9. Accessories
  10. MUCH BETTER ME …..

I would like to share the Galaxy Tab 750 India’s launch video, enjoy it 🙂

Thanks for reading the review & making it this far 🙂 I hope you liked the review and had a “TAB”bing experience just as I had writing the same…

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 9 Comments
There is a saying “Nothing in this world is constant except change”, on a similar lines there have been lot of changes in Bangalore; some good, some bad. However, one thing that has drastically changed is the “Public Transportation“. Remember the days when we only had blue colored BMTC buses but now with the introduction of Volvo buses, Public Transportation has gained momentum. Not to forget with the shift of the international airport to a so called remote place, the obvious choice of most of the Bangaloreans is the famous Vajra bus.

BMTC has done a great job by introducing Volvo buses for the right places and also setting the up the right frequency for the right routes e.g ITPL or Electronics City is a place which is filled with software companies and the frequency of Volvo buses is exceptionally great there !!!

Before writing this article, I interacted with a few people[who travel to ITPL] and most of them preferred BMTC over their own cars/bikes. Apart from the normal ways of generating revenue, there are many other areas where BMTC can look for more revenue:

Brand Promotion

Most of the times, there is FM being played on the radio in the bus but if BMTC manages to tie up with brands, radio can act as a great medium for marketing.It can be used to showcase offers in shopping malls, promote new brands, movies etc. Remember, there is Big Bazaar near ITPL; so this would be much useful in such cases !!!

Job Announcements

After the economy tumbled, many were laid off where some of them landed up in jobs out of no better choice. With Indian economy showing early signs of recovery, Volvo bus would make an excellent tool to showcase jobs again through radio or advertisements inside the bus. To make things better, these advertisements can be geo-targetted like buses from ITPL, Electronics City etc. would ONLY carry those ads.

OOH Advertising

Along with the convenience, the added advantage in Volvo is the additional standing space. The photograph shows the frontal view & there is definitely a big opportunity for Out Of Home advertising. There is space for 2 TVs [one in the frontal entry and other at the back entry]. With OOH growing at 20% annually , this is a big opportunity form BMTC to target the people travelling in the bus.

Photo Credit – Srinidhi Hande

To summarize, BMTC can replicate the Google Adsense model for the Volvo – RIGHT Ads Targeted for the RIGHT routes and obviously for the RIGHT customers !!!

Many of us would be travelling by BMTC buses, hence if you feel there is any other revenue generating opportunity BMTC is missing; please leave them in the comments section & it would be added to the article.

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 2 Comments
It seems like the unconference styled format is becoming quite popular nowadays and even companies like Wipro have realized it’s potential[both in terms of brand building and tentative recruitment].After a series of WiCamps in cities like Bangalore,Pune,Chennai,Hyderabad; WiCamp returns to Wipro’s home ground -Bangalore 

Pavan Soni ,WiCamp’s chief un-organizer mentions :

Practitioners, Entrepreneurs, VCs, Academicians, Faculties, Students, Freelancers and almost everybody want to learn more on innovation and its applications to their lives. We have seen them all visiting these WiCamps over past few months.

WiCamp has been an informal platform which has helped people come together and share their perspectives on innovation.

Rajesh Moorjani, founder of Propel Software is all praise for the Pune edition of WiCamp for it’s perfect adoption of the unconference culture[More here]

So,interested in WiCamp?

Date and Time – 10th October 2008 [9 AM onwards]
Venue – Wipro Technologies Campus, Electronic City, Bangalore
Theme – Taking Ideas to Market
[Interesting theme,however this should be complimented with speakers who have themselves taken some idea to the market wink]

You can register for the event here

 

|In: Bangalore|Last Updated: | 12 Comments

After a much needed break(of close to 2 days) from blogging, I am with the back with an event update.

The second meet of the Open Coffee Club again took place at the same venue – Brew Ha Ha and as expected, the turnout was not very high this time.As compared to the 50+ in the first meet , the turnout this time was around 30 but the good part was that there were a lot of new faces in the crowd.May be we should say the word always spreads out and you never know when it spreads like a fire biggrin

The agenda this time was “Marketing & Startups“.A universal truth is “A great idea alone is not sufficient to succeed and this is what the meet was all about.We were there to discuss on how to fill the thin gap between Technology and Marketing.As Seth Godin says “Bad marketing cannot be fixed with money” and since, there is always a cash crunch for startups, they cannot afford to be sloppy in their marketing !!! Also, since the main focus was on Marketing, how can we have a discussion on marketing without those crucial set of guys who take our idea to the market wink There were few marketing people in the crowd and few startups shared the problems they are facing wrt marketing , which is given below:
Ranith – Kapston (Building scalable effective websites):
Ranjith began the discussion with his startup Kapston.Kapston is a startup which is built to help startups.So what is it all about? As Ranjith mentioned “Since , most(or almost all) startups start with a part time idea, many entrepreneurs loose focus due to various reasons(like lack of time,work load etc etc) and this leads to an additional delay for the startup to hit the market”. So does he(and his team solve the problem)? Startups have to go to his company with the requirements and they would provide an end to end solution for them.Their service is only applicable to the Web 2.0 space and this is where even I felt that Web 2.0 is definitely a space which is looked up by everyone.

But the million dollar question is : “How does a startup afford to outsource the complete work since every penny is worth a millions for them” ?

Sharman ( 99% of the startups fail due to bad marketing):
Sharman who does not have a startup of this own shared his views on Business Plans and marketing.Though he does not have a startup of his own, he has helped Entrepreneurs to formulate their business plans. This statement caught the crowd’s attention and this is where Balu(wanna be Serial Entrepreneur) pitched in mentioning “Business Plan should be made by the entrepreneur himself since, he is the person who should know all the numbers(which would come out in the Business Plan). This argument went on for some time after which he closed his talk with 2 important things(on why startups fail) :

  1. Most of Entrepreneurs(with whom he has worked), did not succeed in their venture due to the lack of the understanding about their customers and
  2. Some entrepreneurs are so much tied(biased) with their idea that they never know when their idea is approaching the dead-end.So, always be flexible with your idea or should I say “Reformulate your plan(idea) just like you change your underwear” wink
Prateek Dayal – Muziboo (Marketing through friends doesn’t work)
Prateek from Muziboo was the one who took the maximum taste from this coffee.He came out with a simple statement “Just like a startup, we don’t want to spend money on marketing”. So , how does he get visitors to his site? He started off by saying that “Friends are good medium when you want to spread the initial word since, you expect the numbers to multiply though your friends but that happens to a very less extent”. He also touched upon Word Of Mouth (WOM) marketing which would be useful when there are a considerable no of visitors to his website.There was an open question to an audience as to “How should we do the marketing?” and there were some good suggestions:
  1. Have your own T shirt with your website, so that the word spreads out at a faster rate( This suggestion came from my side and was liked by a quite a few people in the audience)
  2. Reviews( positive or negative) on blogs which help them make their service better as well as let the open community know about your site.And yes, in today’s world , there is no better , faster and easy marketing medium than Blogs…
  3. Create a one to one relationship with the visitors(till the site has limited no of visitors,right now it has crossed around 200+ visitors so that they feel closely associated with the community). This is what Prateek has been doing at a very regular basis so that there is close relationship between them and the visitors of the site.
  4. Tie up with some of the local music schools and this was a very good suggestion from Siva
  5. Have a “Muziboo Badge” which can be put up on Blogs and sites [ which would help the word spread faster ] , this would do the trick what Firefox Badge had done for Firefox !!!
I had just one point wrt reviews : “Even though few bloggers may provide some criticising feedback but sometimes this may turn like a “Blessing in disguise” For example : Guy Kawasaki’s venture Truemors was not well accepted by the blogger community and due to this negative publicity, the site got many page views from the readers of those blogs surprised

So, at the end of the day, bloggers just voice out their opinions and it is upto the startup to authenticate and take the valid inputs(and implement them).

Swaroop – Ion (Poster marketing does work):
Swaroop’s startup Ion is an ideal example how “A pain can be transformed into a startup” and Ion – the iPod charger is the best example to prove this point. He shared his experience on how “A simple poster did the trick for Ion”. After coming out with their invention, they(Swaroop and his co-founders) had to market the product and they followed “Poster marketing”. They stood outside a Nike showroom and asked few people randomly about the liking of the posters and finally , they chose the poster which had a majority no of votes !!! Apart from posters and publicizing their product on few blogs, they never spent a single penny on marketing and still they got good sales for their product !!!

If you find their story really interesting , check out some of the posters here

Hitesh & Vikram Mehta – PinkKatalyst:
These guys were true examples of advent of Entrepreneurship in India and just in their early 20’s , it was a nice after-event conversation with them about their startup PinkKatalyst. Since, it was more of a routine conversation, not much to be updated here.You can find more about the company here

Photos from OCC Bangalore:

Photo courtesy : Harinath Pudipeddi

What other bloggers are saying:
[If you have already blogged about the event , kindly add your URL in the comments section]

Harinath Pudipeddi : OCC Meet on 2nd Sept,2007

As per the after event discussion, there would be some experienced Entrepreneurs as well as few VC’s ; so hope to catch you all there !!!